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HnnHHIIIIIIIiHIlHi
"SAVE OUR HOMES AND SAVINGS," PLEA OF
HATTERS TO FELLOW LABORERS
Besides most of the defendants are
old men, some of them unable to do
any work. The average age of the
first 16 men named on a list of the
defendants is 72 years.
One of them, Daniel H. Barnes,
who has a comfortable home on Main
street, said to me: "When a man is
over 70 years of age he isn't in con
dition to do much work, nor with his
property gone can he start life over
again. I have not been able to work
for three years." Only Jast week
Barnes' wife died.
Take the case of William Hum
phreys and his wife, whose home has
been attached. Humphreys, a civil
war veteran, is 80 years old. .
Sitting in the low-ceilinged parlor
of his comfortable old-fashioned
home in Stephen st, he and his wife
were an ideal picture of the content
ment of old age won by honest work
and mutual love,
"We have lived in this home," said
Humphreys, "41 years next May. It
represents, all my savings, about $4,-
500, money 1 earned as a hatter in
Danbury.
"I started 'hatting' in 1852, when
not a single hat factory had steam
and machinery, and I kept at it until
1909,-except during the civil war and
several terms that I was a doorkeep
er in the Connecticut state legis
lature. If they take his home from
us I don't know what my wife and I
will do. We will be homeless, and I
have only my pension."
Humphreys, a color bearer, was
wounded four times in the battle of
Gettysburg.
Patrick J. Feeley, whose $4,600
house is one of 125 houses that has
been attached, feels as Humphreys
does. "For 30 years," he said, "I have
worked hard as a hatter and I will
have to until I die, and what is more
I have held a union card the whole
time and I will as long as I live."
Six hundred pairs of hands are
stretched out in supplication to
the working men of America by
those who face the loss-of. their hum
hie homes and savings through the
famous Danbury hatters' strike suit.
All of the bands are not those of
men; some of the are the hands of
women and little children. Many of
the hands are old and wrinkled and
stained from years of toil in the great
hat factories of the town that make
headgear for the millions. Many of
the hands held out in this great plea
for the generosity of labor are those
of persons who had nothing directly
to do with the strike against the D.
B. Loewe company 14 years ago
which led up to a court judgment of
$250,000 against 189 members of the
hatters' union and the attachment of
their bank savings and their 125
homes in which 600 persons live.
Organized labor worked one
hour for the Danbury hatters,
victims of a $252,000 fine imposed
by the TJ. S. supreme court for vio
lating the Sherman anti-trust law in
establishing a boycott on non-union
hats. The Hatters' union is the only
organization which the courts of the
TJ. S. have convicted under the anti
trust law The government has un
successfully prosecuted the Stand
ard Oil Co., the meat trust, the In
ternational Harvester trust and the
cash register trust.
The money collected will go to
save the homes of the union hatters
which were impounded years ago at
the start of the suit
The Loewe company accused the
union hatters of violating the Sher
man anti-trust law because certain
agents of the United Hatters had
urged the purchase of hats with
union labels.
Practically all of them are facing
ruin, many of them the poorhouse,
for their homes represent the great
bulk of their savings of years,